Winders: Selling off the past, waiting for the future

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Winders: Selling off the past, waiting for the future103005 opinion2Athens Banner-HeraldI don't know why this surprises me.--> Winders: Selling off the past, waiting for the future | | Story updated at 10:27 PM on Sunday, October 30, 2005

Jason Winders

Executive Editor

more Winders columns

I don't know why this surprises me.

I mean we've watched folks cash in before - county officials pimping the Ten Commandments, football players hocking SEC Championship rings, States McCarter overdrafting his remaining political capital.

Yes, we've watched proud histories traded off numerous times. So I don't know why I'm surprised to see a Normaltown landmark take its turn.

I guess it wasn't bad enough long-time Allen's owner Billy Slaughter had to part with his baby. His recent, everything-must-go auction - which Slaughter likened to selling off his "children" - officially ended the half century-run of the Normaltown joint which closed its doors New Year's Eve 2003.

"Normaltown was Allen's. Allen's was Normaltown," Slaughter told this newspaper.

To many, that's as true as it gets.

But not anymore.

So perhaps it's further heartbreak to see an Augusta seller - screen name vanessadell69 - slap up a little Normaltown tradition on eBay for a quick resell. A Zima beer bucket, roulette wheel, Two Dollar Pistol concert poster and a Miller Beer bulletin board each found new life on the online auction site last week.

OK, not exactly key treasures, but treasures nevertheless. Vanessadell69 pitched each item as "from an auction of Allen's Hamburgers in Athens, Ga., a University of Georgia student hangout. B-52s wrote a song about the bar."

As you read this right now, bidding winds down on all four items. So best strike fast if you want a piece of the past.

Now perhaps I'm a tad overly sentimental when it comes to a community's tradition and history. Maybe because my hometown constantly tears pieces of its past away or ignores it altogether, I hope for something better for my home today.

And looking around, I guess I'm not alone.

Across this community, neighborhoods are changing - not always for the better - evaporating parts of the past to make way for the future.

Certainly, change happens. It has happened here before, will happen again in the future. Heck, this community has had more work done on it than Joan Collins and Broad Street combined. But the fact all these nips and tucks are coming at once seems to have people's backs up

You can see it in commission meetings, on our letters to the editor pages, during regular, everyday conversation. People are touchy, on edge and a tad bit pissy. And each rezone request or perceived encroachment - right or wrong - only serves to irritate folks more.

Just look at the changing face of Normaltown: The Allen's building, soon to come down, will be replaced with a shiny, new place probably of the multi-use development ilk, the all-saving-grace of modern development. The medical community continues to outgrow its current facilities and looks for new growth opportunities. And who knows how many lanes Prince Avenue will end up with one day.

That's a lot of change in a matter of months for one tiny area.

No wonder our debates have been so loud, so feverish. And understand similar scenarios are playing out in numerous neighborhoods in this community - eastsiders, westsiders, Five Points, on and on and on.

Honestly, how much did Doug Bachtel's comments make you shudder last week? If you missed it, the University of Georgia demographer made a spooky call predicated on completion of a commuter rail between Athens and Atlanta. That potential traffic, he contends, would allow more folks to pop over and enjoy our region-famous downtown bar scene.

"It could become almost a New Orleans kind of atmosphere," he told this newspaper.

Yikes. Not exactly what an already jumpy community wants to hear.

With so much change, so close to home, you can understand our growing tempers. Because here we're not talking about selling a few items from a long-closed bar, we're talking about people's homes.

And that's not something easily slapped up on eBay when we want to move on.

  

Postscript:

To clarify for Richard in Athens: When I said Commissioner States McCarter "makes Ahab look like an uncommitted slacker," I was referencing the White Whale-hunting Capt. Ahab of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick." I was not comparing or contrasting the commissioner to an Arab, a member of an Arabic-speaking people, which so offended you.

 Jason Winders is executive editor of the Athens Banner-Herald. He can be contacted at jason.winders@onlineathens.com.